Microsoft has released an Intel Microcode Update to address Spectre and Foreshadow (L1 Terminal Fault) related vulnerabilities. This patch is specifically for a range of Skylake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake and Broadwell Intel CPUs under Windows 10 version 1809.

All the PC's at the shop here run 1809 and all my rigs at home without issues either.

Same here (2 machines) No issues. I am wondering if the issues are being caused by third party software such as antivirus and such, or people not keeping everything updated.

__________________I speak my mind! if you can't handle that, you might want to leave, because **** is going to get real!!

~I had the right to remain silent, I just didn't have the ability. ~ Ron White
~You can't fix Stupid! ~ Ron White
~There's not a pill you can take; there's not a class you can go to. - ~Stupid is forever. ~ Ron White
~Life is a hard teacher, it gives you the test before it teaches you the lesson.
~It's never to late to have a good childhood! The older you are, the better the toys! ~ My Dad
~Live everyday as though it is your last, it can all end at any moment!

A new class of Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS) Vulnerabilities has been discovered, primarily affecting Intel CPUs, similar to the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. These are known by the aliases Zombieload, RIDL and Fallout. MDS is a hypothetical vulnerability that requires local privileged execution; as with Spectre and Meltdown, no known exploits using this method have yet been detected. Intel has released a Security Advisory on MDS, classifying it as a Medium risk. Microcode updates are being released as the primary mitigation; disabling HyperThreading is not necessary in most cases.

At this stage, current Intel CPUs are going to compete with the Intel 4004.

Yesterdays Windows patches have begun to address this vulnerability. The performance impact is noted as limited, but can be more noticeable if you need to disable HyperThreading.

Quote:

To see whether your system is vulnerable and to what extent, download the MDS Tool found on the middle of this page (https://mdsattacks.com/) and run the relevant executable. If you get an error, install this Visual C++ Redistributable Update and try again. .

At work we use a bunch of these dual core /w HT Lenovo laptops. They’re already kinda marginally usable but this might kill them. 18%-25% average performance drop and a 7-8x increase in context switch time? RIP. Where are the enterprise AMD laptops?

At work we use a bunch of these dual core /w HT Lenovo laptops. They’re already kinda marginally usable but this might kill them. 18%-25% average performance drop and a 7-8x increase in context switch time? RIP. Where are the enterprise AMD laptops?

I've been buying Lenovo ThinkPad A485's for cheap laptops. They work well enough, but battery life SUCKS. Under 3.5 hours puttering around in Windows vs. 6-7 hours easy on a comparable Intel ThinkPad with the same battery config.

Another Spectre-based side-channel security vulnerability is causing concern. It's been dubbed SWAPGS, because it leverages the SWAPGS instruction to allow an attacker to potentially access sensitive data on systems running Windows. This vulnerability affects newer (post-2012) generations of both Intel and AMD CPUs, however AMD disputes this. In any case, Microsoft already released a Security Update for SWAPGS last month, so make sure you install it as soon as possible.

For those with little time: at the high end with socketed x86 CPUs, AMD offers you up to 50 to 100% higher performance while offering at a 40% lower price. Unless you go for the low end server CPUs, there is no contest: AMD offers much better performance for a much lower price than Intel, with more memory channels and over 2x the number of PCIe lanes. These are also PCIe 4.0 lanes. What if you want to more than 2 TB of RAM in your dual socket server? The discount in favor of AMD just became 50%.

Quote:

So has AMD done the unthinkable? Beaten Intel by such a large margin that there is no contest? For now, based on our preliminary testing, that is the case. The launch of AMD's second generation EPYC processors is nothing short of historic, beating the competition by a large margin in almost every metric: performance, performance per watt and performance per dollar.

Analysts in the industry have stated that AMD expects to double their share in the server market by Q2 2020, and there is every reason to believe that AMD will succeed. The AMD EPYC is an extremely attractive server platform with an unbeatable performance per dollar ratio.

__________________I talked to the tree. Thats why they put me away!..." Peter Sellers, The Goon Show
Only superficial people cant be superficial... Oscar Wilde

Ignore List: Keystone... -My Baron he wishes to inform you that vendetta, as he puts it in the ancient tongue, the art of kanlee is still alive... He does not wish to meet or speak with you...-
"Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs and equally compatible with atheism." -Stephen Jay Gould, Rock of Ages.
"The Intelligibility of the Universe itself needs explanation. It is not the gaps of understanding of the world that points to God but rather the very comprehensibility of scientific and other forms of understanding that requires an explanation." -Richard Swinburne

Generally, business take a while to convert. It's just what they do. So the fact that Epyc beats the last generation of intel, while nice on paper, really doesn't mean much until big corporations start building with the Epyc chips. It is encouraging that AMD is throwing that out there but it is really early to start the wake for Intel.

Generally, business take a while to convert. It's just what they do. So the fact that Epyc beats the last generation of intel, while nice on paper, really doesn't mean much until big corporations start building with the Epyc chips. It is encouraging that AMD is throwing that out there but it is really early to start the wake for Intel.

Quote:

Rumor: Google May Use AMD’s EPYC Server Chips

Quote:

According to the Benzinga report, KC Rajkumar heard rumors that Google is not satisfied with Intel’s server platform. This could be possible as Intel has been struggling to keep the security of its x86 architecture in check

A security vulnerability that affects Windows computers running on 64-bit Intel and AMD processors could give an attacker access to your passwords, private conversations, and any other information within the operating system kernel memory. Users are advised to update Windows in order to mitigate against this new CPU "SWAPGS attack" risk.
What is the SWAPGS attack?

"We call this the SWAPGS attack because the vulnerability leverages the SWAPGS instruction," Bogdan Botezatu, director of threat research and reporting at Bitdefender, says "an under-documented instruction that makes the switch between user-owned memory and kernel memory." Botezatu also says that, at this point, "all Intel CPUs manufactured between 2012 and today are vulnerable to the SWAPGS attack." Which means every Intel chip going back to the "Ivy Bridge" processor is vulnerable if inside a machine running Windows.

However, it appears it is not just Intel CPUs that are affected by the SWAPGS attack vulnerability. According to a Red Hat advisory published August 6th, the threat “applies to x86-64 systems using either Intel or AMD processors.” Something that AMD itself disputes.

An AMD spokesperson pointed me in the direction of a public statement online: "AMD is aware of new research claiming new speculative execution attacks that may allow access to privileged kernel data. Based on external and internal analysis, AMD believes it is not vulnerable to the SWAPGS variant attacks because AMD products are designed not to speculate on the new GS value following a speculative SWAPGS. For the attack that is not a SWAPGS variant, the mitigation is to implement our existing recommendations for Spectre variant 1."

That same Red Hat advisory stated that “based on industry feedback, we are not aware of any known way to exploit this vulnerability on Linux kernel-based systems.” During my briefing with Botezatu, he noted that "Linux machines are also impacted," however, due to the operating system architecture they are "less prone to this type of attack, as it is less reliable." Botezatu says that other operating system vendors are not impacted at this point, "but are still investigating similar attack avenues leveraging the SWAPGS attack."

Although Bitdefender tested two AMD CPUs and found that neither exhibited speculative behavior for the SWAPGS instruction, and although AMD says that they believe its products are, for that reason, not vulnerable to the SWAPGS variant attack, a Red Hat advisory says that the vulnerability “applies to x86-64 systems using either Intel or AMD processors.”

Microsoft also mentions AMD and ARM-based systems being vulnerable to Spectre attacks, but it’s unclear whether this latest variant (SWAPGS attack) would affect them. The company provided security updates with fixes for various Windows versions, including Windows 10 for ARM64-based systems.